


Accelerate the Fall

by 0bsidianFire



Series: Static Tuned in to Reason [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Awkward Summoner Moments, Gen, Inconvenient Emotions, Mental Link, Multiple Warriors of Light, Summoner - Freeform, The Rising, Theorycrafting, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bsidianFire/pseuds/0bsidianFire
Summary: For the people of Eorzea, the Rising is a time to remember all that changed with the 7th Umbral Calamity.For Summoner Kharagal Mierqid, it's a time to celebrate Bahamut's escape from Dalamud. Preferably without freaking everyone else out. Fortunately, she's got good friends and knows of a great place to let loose.





	Accelerate the Fall

"You sure you don't want to watch the first showing of this year's The Rising with us, Kharagal?" Carmen asked as she finished changing into something flashier than her usual ninja leathers. For the huyr, that was yet another set of ninja leathers that were a brilliant shade of Rouges' Guild green.

Kharagal glanced up from where she was trying to diagram out all the different versions of Bio III in an effort to keep busy and grimaced to herself. "Not really." She played with one of her horn-rings and looked out the window at the Lominsan sunset. The color reminder her of Teraflare. "It's not the same for me as it is for you guys. I shouldn't spoil it for you."

"Because you where still in the Nhaama Desert?" Carmen opened the door to the rest of the house and looked back at Kharagal. "You know nobody thinks less of you for not being here while the Calamity happened."

"Yeah, I know." Kharagal rested her head against the wall behind her. All she had seen of the Calamity was that one night, Dalamud ceased to rise and months later, a wave of aether had swept across the desert. It would be much easier for her if that was really all it was. Her aether unconsciously shifted around to match itself more closely to the Dreadwyrm's, reminding her of why that wasn't the real reason she didn't want to watch The Rising. "Attunement's a little too close I think." It wasn't quite the truth, but it was close enough.

Carmen's eyes narrowed. "And you think that'll make a difference tonight?"

Kharagal nodded. "Normally it's okay that there's a lot of bleed, but I've never felt him this happy since we sent the Warring Triad on to the Lifestream. Not to mention that the rest of the eikons aren't all that talkative at the moment, so I'm not getting a break from him either."

Carmen was about to say something when Alex walked in behind her. The elezen glanced at his wife and arced an eyebrow. "Something wrong?"

She gave Kharagal a pointed look. "Nothing major. It's just that Kharagal thinks Bahamut's being too pushy."

Kharagal glared at Carmen and decided not to correct her. "Instead of remembering what it's like to be stuck in Dalamud for five millennia like normal, I'm remembering how good it feels to break out of Dalamud." Kharagal's eyes met Alex's and saw nothing but understanding there. "I don't want to remember how horrible it was for everyone one else. Not yet, not when all I can think about is how it finally gave us a chance to send him on."

Alex gave her a searching look and nodded. "Kharagal, it's fine. Breaking out is always messy." By this time, his blue eyes glowed gold and the familiar blood-red aura writhed around him. "You want to have fun blasting stuff to pieces with Demi-Bahamut on the anniversary of the Calamity? Go do it. You'll feel better afterwards."

"And after that, go get some sleep. No wonder you haven't been sleeping well all week." Carmen waved and followed Alex out of the room. Kharagal let out the breath she'd been holding. It still surprised her when her surrogate family members didn't just accept that it was normal for her to hear voices in her head, but encouraged her to go along with them when possible. 

* * *

After sunset, Kharagal teleported to Northern Thanalan and made for Dalamud's Talons to enter Dalamud. The Alliance had sealed up all the currently known entrances to the caverns beneath Carteneau, but there was nothing they could to do to divert the atherial flow that led from the internment hulks to the Talons. Provided one was a master at manipulating aether, the hulks were essentially a short, if subtle, teleport away.

She emerged from the flow on the internment hulk where Nael van Darnus had been fought. The air was thick with Bahamut's aether and Kharagal automatically went into Dreadwrym Trance without even thinking about it. She eyed one of the remaining holotransmiters and let Deathflare tunnel though it. _Take that Nael._ The sight of melting Allagan architecture was one of the most satisfying things Kharagal had seen all day. In the back of her head, she felt Sophia's pleasure at the deserved destruction and Sephirot's wry irony at her and Nael's respective roles in relation to the Dreadwrym. It was the first emotion she'd felt from the other eikons in a while. Kharagal still wasn't as deep into Dalamud as she wanted to be. "'Tania!" she called out and sent a pulse of aether out.

With a roar, Twintania rose out of the depths of Dalamud and nearly crashed onto the hulk. **"Channeler!"** the dragon shouted, **"You are coming below?"**

"Yes!" Kharagal walked over and climbed onto Twintania's back. "The lowest hulk is nearly gone. We finish with it today."

 **"Good!"** Twintania took off and plummeted onto the lowest hulk. The aether emitter had been broken off it and the decking around the control console was pock-marked with Twister indents and Conflagration footprints. Twintania had been busy.

Kharagal inspected the joint where the internment hulk me Dalamud's inner shell. As melted as it was from repeated Liquid Hells, the metal still held. She summoned Demi-Bahamut who gleefully punctured the metal with multiple casts of Ahk Morn. It still held. "No magic I can normally form breaks it. I assume you're trying more then Liquid Hell?."

 **"I am testing everything I know on it and they are not working."** Twintania told her. **"Megaflare might do it."**

"I still can't cast that one," Kharagal grumbled. "Teraflare it is." She leaned back against the control console and began pulling on the aether around her. Demi-Bahamut coiled around her and rested his head on her shoulder. "At least here the aether isn't a problem."

Twintania curled up against a bulkhead across from Kharagal and narrowed her eyes at Kharagal. **"You are still getting visions when you cast it."**

"Yeah." A memory of Dalamud crumbling around her accompanied the influx of aether. "Right now, I'm seeing it even when I'm not trying to channel him at all. Hydaelyn is back where she was she was when Dalamud fell and I can still sense all the aethertrails of the fall." Kharagal looked over at where Bahamut had been reforming. "I'm even annoyed other people don't think it's a good thing he finally got out."

 **"And now you know why mortals can't understand us!"** Twintania laughed.

"I suppose that's why Tiamat hates me." Kharagal shivered as an image of Tiamat, unbound, gazing up at her in horror was scrawled against her mind's eye. She scratched Demi-Bahamut's tail. "She tells me to never come back to the Delta Quadrant until my aether stops trying to take the shape of an abomination." Kharagal rolled her eyes. "Never mind that at the time, I was facing an Ascian and had better things to worry about then what my own aether would be like afterwards."

**"You are not going back to her."**

"Tiamat?" Kharagal snorted. "No, not when I have the rest of Azys Lla to explore. Besides, I know how Nidhogg is when he's angry. I am not going though that again." Her pull on aether tapered off and Demi-Bahamut looped though the air over Kharagal. "Well, that should be good enough."

 **"Do you want to cast it from my back?"** Twintania shook herself and got to her feet.

"Yes," Kharagal laughed as she climbed on Twintania. Last time, the section of decking she'd been on had given way beneath her. Twintania flew right over the joint and hovered there.

Kharagal took all the aether she'd absorbed from Dalamud and pulled it into the Dreadwrym Trance she was already in. Usually she could only cast Teraflare when she was desperate enough to pull from the hidden aether reserves every mage had, but Dalamud was saturated with Dreadwrym aether. Absorbing it as her own was almost like drinking from an never-ending vial of Max-Ether; the hardest part was stopping. As the force of the trance expanded, the parts of Kharagal's aetherial aura that didn't match her body became more visible. The usual crown of dragon horns and Allagan augments were first, followed by the massive set of double-jointed wings. Aether-claw tipped fingers traced out the geometry of Teraflare and Kharagal forced a monstrous quantity of aether into it. The geometry split the aether into a trillion lines and diffracted them across the joint and parts of the internment hulk.

Metal shrieked and the joint disintegrated. The internment hulk began bleeding fire and crashed further down into Dalamud. Ceruleum leaked down the wall, aiming for the fire-wreathed hulk. They met in an explosion of superheated metal and unstable aether. Twintania roared in approval and flew out of the blast zone, Demi-Bahamut close behind her. In her head, Kharagal felt Bahamut's pleasured aether lick over her in contentment. _**I am never tempering thou, mortal, not even if the Echo is lost,**_ Bahamut rumbled. _**Thou desirest the power to break the chains others cast, with little regard for the cost! It is a waste to change a longing that resonates with mine own so well.**_

 _My favorite place for you is the Lifestream,_ Kharagal shot back.

 _ **A place I am free to go where I want; for now it is freedom enough!**_ Bahamut's aether licked down the parts of Kharagal's aura that mimicked his before sleepily coiling around her in the back of her head. It would have been more terrifying if Kharagal hadn't seen dragons in Anyx Trine do the same thing with their dragonets. It also was not the first time Bahamut had decided she was more useful to him untempered.

Twintania landed on the same internment hulk Kharagal had warped in on, jolting Kharagal out of her thoughts. **"This feels good,"** the dragon laughed. **"I do not want to wait long until the rest are gone."**

"You still want to leave with me then?" Kharagal asked as she climbed off Twintania.

 **"Perhaps. You say the world is changed from what I knew. I will think on it."** Twintania launched into the air and divebombed back into the depths of Dalamud.

 _Hopefully it is changed enough for you,_ Kharagal thought to herself before casting herself into the atherial flow.

The teleport back to Dalamud's Talons was easier then the teleport into Dalamud. What made up for it was the sudden loss of a Teraflare-powered Dreadwrym Trance and Demi-Bahamut. Kharagal's aether collapsed back into what served as its non-attuned shape and Kharagal leaned against a talon of aether and yawned. For once there was no agitated need to go do something, except sleep, which rarely came these days. A mental check on Bahamut revealed he was still coiled around her and for once not paying attention to anything in particular.

Kharagal smiled to herself and teleported to the house in Mist she and her siblings shared. She burst out laughing when it turned out nobody else was home. It looked like she would finally be getting a fuller night's sleep then everyone else would.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the headcanon that tuning your aether to a eikon's doesn't just give you knowledge of how to cast their techniques, but also the memories of when those techniques were cast. Which for Teraflare is well... yeah...
> 
> One of the weirder things about writing this was making sure all the dragon speech (and a lot of Kharagal's when in Trance) stayed in present tense...


End file.
